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Off-Ramp
Hosted by John Rabe

Exploring Southern California with John Rabe

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Episodes
  • Surfridge resident remembers when LAX turned his beachside neighborhood into a ghost town
    Did you you read Caitlin Hernandez's LAist longread about the history of LAX and how to keep it from driving you totally around the bend? This time on Off-Ramp we're digging into one of the most surprising and weirdest aspects of the airport's history ... when the airport created a ghost-town that today resembles what LA will look like a few months after the apocalypse. We'll drive there with author Denise Hamilton, who set a novel there, and a former resident.

    Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

    Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

  • White officials thought late great sax man Big Jay McNeely was corrupting the youth
    When the Grammy Museum honored Big Jay McNeely in 2017, when he was 90, they said:

    McNeely is a true original and the last of a generation of blues/R&B musicians who inspired the early rock pioneers, and are still around to remind us where popular music came from.

    As Off-Ramp jazz correspondent Sean J. O'Connell put it when he interviewed him for the show: 

    "Big Jay McNeely was etched into pop music immortality in 1951. Photographer Bob Willoughby captured McNeely at a concert at Los Angeles's Olympic Auditorium 1951. In the photo, the Watts native is blasting his tenor sax on his back, the camera capturing the raised fists of post-war teenage hysteria seething in undershirts and pompadours at the foot of the stage. From Central Avenue with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum in the 1940s to the R&B circuit of the '50s and '60s, McNeely was there through a roller coaster of musical evolutions and had a good time along the way. His showmanship and soul are both youthful and timeless. He is rock & roll history, alive and well."

    Big Jay died a year later, but not before our listeners got to hear his story, and now you do, too.

    Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

    Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

    Bob Willoughby photo used with permission from his estate.

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